Stories tagged with "Scientific American"

Scientific American's Path to Sustainability: Let's Think about the Details

Posted by Gail the Actuary on November 9, 2009 - 10:10am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: hydroelectric, scientific american, solar photovoltaic, solar power, sustainability, wind [list all tags]


Scientific American presents "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030" in its November issue. In many ways, it sounds good. But let's think about the details: What would the end result look like? Would it really be sustainable? What would the costs really be? Is there any way we could afford to do what is proposed?

The authors of the article, Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, propose substituting wind, water, and solar (WWS) energy for all other forms of energy by 2030, not for just the US, but for the world. The types of energy sources that would be eliminated include the following:

• Petroelum (including gasoline, diesel, propane, heating oil, etc.)
• Natural gas
• Coal
• Liquid biofuels, such as ethanol
• Wood and other biomass
• Nuclear

All that would remain would be wind, wave power, tidal energy, hydroelectric, geothermal, and solar. Because of the ambitious timeframe, the only techniques that can be used are ones that work at large scale today, or are very close to working.

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Comments on Scientific American's "Squeezing more oil from the ground"

Posted by Luis de Sousa on October 19, 2009 - 10:30am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Geology/Exploration
Tags: colin campbell, jean laherrère, kern river, leonardo maugeri, scientific american [list all tags]

This article, put together by Jean Laherrère and edited by Colin Campbell, is a critical review of the recent article by Leonardo Maugeri published by Scientific American.

A decade ago, Scientific American published the seminal article by these two luminaries of the Peak Oil awareness movement, that relaunched the debate on M. King Hubbert's finds, Scientific American appears now as a completely different publication. Now, however, scientific content doesn't seem to be a requisite for its articles. Among other eerie details, Leonardo Maugeri goes as far as citing "Common Wisdom" to present erroneous facts.

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Peak Oil Not a Problem According to NY Times; Scientific American - Our Response on the Financial Aspects

Posted by Gail the Actuary on September 26, 2009 - 10:40am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: new york times, peak oil, reserves, scientific american [list all tags]

Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people's fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times:

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000.

The other is from the October Scientific American, called

Squeezing More Oil from the Ground.

It is behind a pay wall (you can get it for $5.95). There is also a draft version available on line. Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

In this post, we will look a little more at these articles, and see why peak oil, and perhaps the financial issues associated with peak oil, are still an issue, regardless of what these articles may suggest.

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